Hallowed Be Thy Name
by red for revolution
Summary: Evil isn't evil when you don't have any choice. For the Caesar's Palace Monthly Oneshot Challenge.


Delta doesn't quite know what to think as the sun needles through her eyelids and the arena falls away on either side of her tribute plate. The countdown has begun, already, her body is tensing, her hands curling into neat, sharp fists, her feet poised, ready, but her mind is wandering.

She jerks it back sharply.

This is what she's been training to do for her entire life. She's not going to be killed because she couldn't keep her eyes fixed tight on the Cornucopia. On the prize. On her life. She can see Marvel three plates away, and Cato just before the ring of tributes disappears behind the golden horn. They both nod to her, a silent acknowledgement, and then the gong is shaking the earth on its foundations, and without a thought, without a single, silent thought, she's off, running through the grass that whispers protests against her feet as they slam it down into the earth from which it came.

She almost crashes into Glimmer, and they exchange terse smiles. The older girl already has a sword in hand, and Delta quickly finds the trident she knows with the quiet confidence of a District Four Career who knows she did well in training is waiting for her, turning it on a child who thought to risk the lion's den. He dies with a spurt of blood that sprays up into her face like perfume, salty, tangy perfume.

She thinks of the sea. She wrenches the trident out from his ribcage, watching the way he falls silently, crumpling like a piece of paper taken by the westerly wind. Then she turns her attention to another child. And then another. She's still stabbing the limp, sobbing form of the kid from District Seven when there's a hand on her shoulder, and Marvel's voice brushing against her ear and making her think of the time up on the Training Centre roof. It was nothing, innocent in the fact that neither of them wanted to be virgins in case the unthinkable happened.

"Leave it, Delta. She's dead."

She comes back into herself, then, with a start. Her trident is red up to the tines, her hands are painted with the deaths of children. They're only children. Children. She feels like vomiting, but instead wrenches out her trident and follows Marvel back to where the others are setting up camp. His hand ghosts across the small of her back, but instead of meeting his inviting smile, all she can think about is the light leaving a child's eyes. She remembers her mother sitting by the blue-green driftwood fire, on her knees with her hands clasped, the prayer spilling over her lips, the Ten Commandments written on the tablet proud on the wall.

Her father always told her to take no notice of the religious mumbo-jumbo. But she remembers those commandments, they're forever branded into her memory. Do not murder. Well, she's just broken that one rather spectacularly. Guilt pours down her throat, hot and thick, but she pretends that nothing's the matter, helps them to stack food, into a pyramid, watches the little District Three kid show them how to get in and out, waits for darkness to properly fall.

"We're going out in an hour," Glimmer announces to the company at general, letting Cato take her hand and pull her eagerly off to the lakeside, just around the corner, just out of sight. Clove pulls a disgusted face. Marvel puts his arms around Delta's waist.

"Want to..." His sentence has a loose, flapping end, an invitation. Delta shrugs.

"Sure, I'll meet you in five minutes. Go find somewhere. Are you okay for watch, Clove?"

Clove rolls her eyes. Delta takes that as assent as Marvel disappears off into the soupy gloom that rapid falls like a cloak over the shoulders of the sky. Then she kneels awkwardly by the fire, and links her hands together. It takes a while for the words to come back to her, but suddenly, they're throwing themselves off the tip of her tongue, "Our Father, who are in heaven...deliver us from evil..."

When she's finished, she pulls herself away, the guilt dying down a bit. It's not her fault that she was reaped, that in this world it's kill or be killed. It's hardly evil to not want to die, is it?

(She knows the truly selfless thing would be to fall on her sword. But to the eyes of the world, that's cowardice, and she knows she's anything but a coward, no matter what her mother's faith might demand of her).

So she puts the whole thing out of her mind, and goes to find Marvel, who waits for her with open arms and ready kisses.

Evil isn't evil when you don't have any choice.


End file.
